Kill or Be Killed  Extended Ending
by fandomfatale
Summary: Takes place after the episode ends: Damon, Stefan, and Caroline debrief after a trying day. Lots of brotherly interaction, and some Stefan/Caroline, Stefan/Katherine, Damon/Katherine, and Damon/Elena content.


Title: Kill or Be Killed – Extended Ending

Summary: Takes place after the episode ends: Damon, Stefan, and Caroline debrief after a trying day. Lots of brotherly interaction, and some Stefan/Caroline, Stefan/Katherine, Damon/Katherine, and Damon/Elena.

Disclaimer: The Vampire Diaries and all of its places and characters and plots etc. do not belong to me. *sighs*

Author's Notes: Not a lot happens in this story, but some of the characters get to say some things they ought to say. No, sorry, "debrief" is not a euphemism for "have wild sex".

"Mason told you about me and Stefan. What else did he say?"

Damon scratched his head, clearly frustrated with Liz Forbes' silence. He put his hands on either side of her, and leaned intimidatingly into her personal space. "What else did he say, Liz?"

"Let her sleep," Stefan urged, appearing in the doorway. "Stop interrogating her."

Stefan had been with Elena for 45 minutes, so he didn't know how long Damon had been badgering the sheriff, or how many times he had asked that exact same question. Now that Elena had finally gone home, Stefan didn't want to be alone. He could smell Damon's private stash in the next room…

"We need to know what she knows – what Mason knows – before I make her forget it all," Damon explained, his eyes still boring into Liz's. "Did he tell you how he found out about us?"

She was trembling, a mouse in a cat's grip. "Are you going to torture me?"

For a second, hurt flashed in Damon's eyes. "Don't tempt me," he finally said. "After all, you tortured _me_."

"And it didn't work," she returned with an edge of defiance.

Damon smiled. "No, it didn't." He eased up and paced away from her, repeating her name three times in a scolding tone. "I'm on the council, aren't I? It's my job to protect this town, and I've been doing it. I'll do it better if I've got all of the facts."

Stefan didn't know how his brother said it with a straight face. He added his own argument for good measure: "You've seen me with Elena – we've been dating for over a year. I love her. She cares about this town, and she's got family here. Believe I'll protect it for her, if you don't believe in our general good will."

She stifled her outrage and then sighed. "He wanted on the council. That's all he said. He was using the information about you to ply me because I wasn't taking him seriously."

Damon and Stefan exchanged looks.

"He's got an angle," Damon concluded, his eyes distant while the gears turned in his head. "He wants on the council for a reason. He knew that Stefan and I were vampires – why didn't he say something right away if all he cared about was the safety of the residents of Mystic Falls?"

Liz couldn't answer.

Damon nodded at her. "He's the enemy, not me."

_Not anymore_, Stefan thought.

"And not Caroline," Damon added.

"I want to go to sleep," Liz stated, staring down at the cellar floor.

Damon left the room without another word to her, and Stefan closed the door, following after as his brother headed upstairs for a drink. Damon ignored Caroline's sleeping form, taking his liquor over by the fire and leaning against the mantle.

"Why would Mason tell Liz about you? You didn't stab him – you tried to make peace even after he nearly killed you and Caroline," Damon wondered. "Now _me_, I get."

"Because he knew I'd come after him," Stefan replied, without thinking, crossing his arms.

"You'd avenge your big brother?" Damon questioned, skeptical, stopping his train of thought to follow-up.

Stefan was reluctant to be drawn into such a discussion – into admitting that he might not do the thing that was right, strictly-speaking, when it came to his brother – but he sighed and told the truth, though not without a note of exasperation. "Yeah, Damon, I would."

Damon was about to give Stefan a hard time, but he let the answer rest where it was. "What about you, did Katherine tell you anything?" he then asked, facing Stefan but not looking at him.

Caroline had woken at her name, and Damon had heard her stir under her blanket, relaxing as the intimate fraternal moment she couldn't help but overhear eased up.

Stefan didn't know what was going on until Caroline responded as she sat up: "No."

Stefan swiveled to look at her, and felt instant pity at seeing her shame. "I'm so sorry, Stefan," Caroline apologized, her eyes welling up.

He held up his hand to stop her. "It's OK. There's no one in this room who doesn't know what it feels like to be used by Katherine. And Elena told me: she was threatening Matt. You're right to be afraid of her. The truth is: we don't really know how to stop her."

"And she threatened my mom," Caroline added. "And me. And Elena. And Bonnie. I was so scared, Stefan. But I should have come to you from the start: I know you would've tried to help me."

"She could kill anyone at any time," Damon stated. "She doesn't even need to make threats. We know her: the threats are there because she's there."

Stefan shook his head. "No. Katherine's not going to kill Elena – she's too valuable. As for you and me – she's got plans for us. Both of us," Stefan added with a signifying look. He turned back to Caroline. "But we've got to find a way to protect you. And Matt."

"And everyone else," Caroline offered with a fatalistic sigh.

"She said something about her past catching up with her," Stefan pondered. "That's why she faked her death in 1864. She's afraid of something. We need to figure out what it is."

"That was 150 years ago, Stefan. I doubt she's been idle: she might have taken care of it already," Damon argued.

Stefan wasn't so sure.

"Well, I do know that we need to send that dog out to the country farm. Right now," Damon mandated, characteristically shifting the conversation away from Katherine to his werewolf obsession because he so obviously didn't want to talk about her.

Stefan was inclined to agree. "When he doesn't hear back from Sheriff Forbes he's going to make himself scarce. If he does come back, it won't be until the full moon, which isn't for a couple of weeks."

"I'm coming," Caroline said, standing up.

"I'm not so sure…" Stefan protested without verbal deftness.

"What? Are you worried about her?" Damon patted Stefan on the back paternalistically. "She's a big girl. Look at what she did today."

Caroline had not been to the Lockwood mansion since becoming a vampire, so she waited outside while Stefan and Damon stealthily searched for Mason inside, to no avail. Frustrated, they met Caroline out in the lawn.

"He took a powder," Damon explained angrily. "We should have come sooner. As soon as you were better, Stefan, we should have come. He was here not too long ago – I could smell it."

Caroline shook her head, confused.

"He's gone," Stefan informed her. "Damon, you can't use idiomatic expressions from the 20's with a teenager."

Caroline had spent so much time worrying about her mother finding out, and about needing to protect Matt, and keeping Katherine happy, and trying to control her cravings, that she had almost forgotten her own immortality. "Everyone I love is going to die before me…" she realized quietly, sounding for a second time that day very much like a little girl. She had said all of those things to Elena at Katherine's behest, but Caroline hadn't digested them. They were all true…

Stefan focused his gaze on her and took a step in her direction without knowing exactly what he was going to do.

"Not necessarily," Damon began. "It's not so hard to kill a vampire. Killed a few myself." He said this without remembering his own fatal designs on Caroline only a few days earlier. When the memory creeped it's way back, just as Stefan was giving him a "that's-not-helpful" glare, Damon had a mind to apologize to her now that he owed her his life.

_Another time._

Caroline began to leak, as tired as she was from spending the entire day in emotional turmoil, she couldn't stop it.

Stefan didn't have anything comforting to say to her, but he took her into his arms as the tears began to roll down her cheeks.

"This is neither the time nor the place," Damon reminded them, rolling his eyes and then scanning the Lockwood property for movement.

Stefan didn't want to appear insensitive, but he agreed that they needed to get back to the boardinghouse. He grabbed her shoulders, pulled her out and looked into her blue eyes. "I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that it's going to be OK. You're never going to feel like it's OK. But you won't be alone, Caroline. As long as I'm around, I'll be here for you if you need me." He moved his hands up to her face and wiped her tears away.

She was almost moved to crying again, this time in a good way, but she staunched the flow by giving him a determined nod.

"Are we done?" Damon asked impatiently before running home at full speed. Stefan and Caroline followed.

Damon made the point that there were plenty of bedrooms where she could sleep, but she made it clear that she didn't want to secluded in a dark, cold room in the cavernous bowels of the boardinghouse. She didn't want to be alone.

Stefan wrote in his journal while Caroline fell asleep, once again on the couch. She was long gone when Damon reappeared after checking on her mother and getting some blood.

He sat down next to Stefan and noticed him looking at his glass. "Are you OK?"

Stefan nodded, overly confident and therefore obviously lying. "I'm fine."

"I don't think so."

"I want it. I want a lot more than I had," he confessed. "But I'm not going to give in. Not today."

Damon finished the glass of blood quickly as a gesture of support.

"And I would really appreciate not hearing any I-told-you-so's," Stefan added. "I should have done this a long time ago. You were right. Do we really need to have that conversation again?"

Damon lifted his eyebrows. "I didn't say anything. I'm just glad you're doing it now. I was…worried about you, today."

"Worried? You don't worry, Damon."

"Fine. I was…furious that you were so weak. I like it when I know you've got my back. Is that better?"

Stefan laughed, amused and annoyed. "I guess that's better."

Damon glanced over at Caroline and then back at him. "I was wondering how this little triangle of ours was going to be resolved. But I'm a silver-lining kinda guy, and I think you might have blond cheerleader in your future. You know, after Elena chooses me."

Stefan laughed again. "You're going to have to stop that if you want to hear what I was going to say to you."

"I'll bite. What we're you going to say?"

"I was going to say that it was really hard for me to know what to tell Caroline tonight, because I never quite went through what she's going to go through. No matter how many people I had lost, how cut-off from everyone I felt, I always knew that my brother was out there."

Damon sighed. "This is getting dangerously close to a chick-flick moment."

"Well you can relax, because it's over."

"No, no, not yet. It can't be over before I say that the eternity of misery I promised and delivered to you was nothing compared to the eternity of misery I would have had all by myself, without you. Now it's over."

"What about Katherine? Where does she fit into this little triangle of yours?" Stefan goaded, quickly moving out of the awkward moment.

"Now, Stefan-"

"All I'm going to say is that I think it might be a little more complicated than you said."

"Fine. You said it, not me. Maybe Elena had a point today when she asked how you could hate Katherine and love her."

"And maybe I had a point today when I said I wasn't you," Stefan retorted.

"I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean. I'm over Katherine."

Stefan laughed for a third time (almost a record), this time in skepticism. "I'll believe that when you…No, I'll never believe that. But do you know what I do believe? You _should_ get over her, because you're too good for her. Now, how many times are you going to hear me say that?"

Damon, even as his negative emotions were getting stirred at the mention of Katherine, was able to chuckle at that. "Fine. I'm not over her…but neither are you," he posited.

Stefan bit his lip thoughtfully and met his brother's interrogative and accusatory gaze. "OK. You're over her. I see it now."

Damon nodded. "So, we're both over her," he stated conclusively, and without a shred of confidence. "We don't want anything to do with her. We don't want to see her. We don't want to listen to her. We don't want to kiss her, or to run our hands through her characteristically curly hair, or over her soft, olive skin. And we certainly don't want to take her roughly against a wall and show her… just how much we're over her."

"No, we don't."

"Right."


End file.
